Halo

by Tom Maddox

  can hold off a bitI'll let you know when we're ready."

  There was a sharp knock at the door, and it swung open to

  admit Traynor and Horn.

  "Good morning, all," Traynor said.

  "Good morning," Charley said. Gonzales nodded; everyone else

  pretty much ignored the man.

  "I take it you are preparing for another excursion with

  Aleph," Traynor said.

  "That's right," Lizzie said.

  "You =have no authorization," Horn said.

  "I have the collective's endorsement," Lizzie said. "Also

  the concurrence of the medical team, and the consent of the

  participants. We will replace the resources you took from Aleph.

  It is a consensus."

  "One excluding any vertical consultation," Traynor said.

  "Point granted," Lizzie said. "But we didn't think it

  necessary. We'll report to Horn in due course."

  Gonzales stood looking into the open egg and began taking his

  shirt off. "Mikhail," Traynor said. "What are you doing?"

  "What I came here for," Gonzales said. "The same as these

  people."

  "You're out of it," Traynor said. "Put your shirt back on

  and go homeyou can take the shuttle out this afternoon."

  "I don't think so," Gonzales said. He put his folded shirt

  on the back of the chair.

  "You're fired," Traynor said. His voice shook just a little.

  "By you, maybe," Lizzie said. "Gonzales, welcome to the

  Interface Collective."

  "I'll never confirm that," Horn said.

  Toshi said, "I have a question for you, Mister Traynor, and

  you, Mister Horn. What do you intend to do about Aleph and the

  existing crisis? Do you have a plan of action that makes what is

  planned here unnecessary?"

  "Yes, we are bringing in an entire staff of analysts,"

  Traynor said. "We will follow their recommendations concerning

  the present difficulties; we will also institute arrangements that

  will prevent anything of this kind from happening again." He

  nodded to Horn.

  "By effecting a decentralization modality," Horn said. "The

  various functionalities and aspects of the Aleph system will be

  reorientated to allow of individualized project performance."

  "We're going to replace Aleph with a number of smaller,

  controllable machines," Traynor said.

  "Are you?" Lizzie said, and she laughed.

  "That is impossible," Charley said.

  "Or has already been done," Toshi said. "Aleph itself

  instituted a dispersal of functions to independent agents.

  However, all must ultimately be supervised by a central

  intelligence."

  "That's what people are for," Traynor said. "Halo's reliance

  on a machine intelligence has proved unworkable."

  Toshi said, "As that may be. However, your remarks

  concerning the immediate circumstances lack substance."

  "Does your advisor agree to this plan?" Gonzales asked.

  "Why do you ask?" Traynor asked.

  "Curious," Gonzales said. Traynor said nothing. "Well, I

  didn't think it would," Gonzales said.

  Lizzie said, "One thing at a time. You bring on your

  analysts, and we'll fight your silly scheme when we have to. But

  in the meantime, stay away from us and perhaps we can fix what you

  have broken."

  "That will not be possible," Traynor said. "As your previous

  efforts caused the situation, any further involvement on your part

  will likely worsen it; therefore, as representative of SenTrax

  Board, I am denying you authorization for any connections to Aleph

  other than those required to maintain essential functions at

  Halo."

  "Someone here is a fool," Diana said. Dressed in a long

  white cotton gown, she stepped from behind her screen, neural

  cables trailing down her back. "Presumably this one." She

  pointed to Horn. To Traynor she said, "Horn has lived and worked

  here; he has no excuse for his ignorance of the facts of life at

  Halo. You, on the other hand, have come into a situation you do

  not understand. Let me tell you the main thing you need to know:

  you cannot disperse Aleph or replace it with what you think are

  the sum of its parts. You cannot even locate Aleph."

  "What do you mean?" Horn asked.

  "Where is Aleph?" Diana said. "It and Halo are so deeply

  intertwined that you cannot separate them. Halo's breath is

  Aleph's breath. Halo sees and hears and feels and moves with

  Aleph."

  "Poetic but unconvincing," Traynor said.

  "More than poetry," Diana said. "No one knows where Aleph's

  central components are."

  "Is that true?" Traynor asked.

  "Yes," Horn said.

  "This complicates matters," Traynor said. "No more."

  "I am not interested in this discussion," Lizzie said.

  "Anyone who wishes may pursue it later, but we have things to do.

  Building monitor, this is Lizzie Jordan; please notify Halo

  Security that we have two intruders in the building and wish them

  removed." To Traynor she said, "If you think we can't enforce

  this, ask Horn about Halo Central Authority and who they'll side

  withcorporate wankers who can do nothing to keep this city

  running, or us. Better yet, ask your machine."

  Traynor stood looking at them all, apparently doing just

  that. For a couple of long heartbeats, everyone waited. Then

  Traynor smiled through pain, like a man trying to hide a broken

  bone. He said, "We cannot prevent you from this unauthorized

  connection to Aleph, but we can and will put on the official

  record that proper SenTrax authority has forbidden this attempt.

  Thus you must all be considered insubordinate, and as soon as

  proper means can be devised, you will be removed from your

  positions with SenTrax. Also, any further damage done to the

  Aleph system or Halo City, directly or indirectly, must be

  considered your individual responsibility, given that proper

  SenTrax authority has forbidden your intended actions."

  "You take nice dictation," Lizzie said. "Consider your

  statement duly noted and get the fuck out of here.

  21. Drunk with Love

  Waiting in the egg, Gonzales smelled strange smells and felt

  electric quiverings of the flesh, saw an instant of pure blue

  light, and with a sudden rush

  He flew cruciform against the sky. The horizon's flat line

  seemed thousands of miles away. Far below, people scurried

  aimlessly across a sandy plain, and voices called in unknown

  languages. Massive machinery lumbered to nowhere among the

  crowds, metal arms thousands of feet long folding and unfolding in

  random seizure, improbably threading their behemoth way among the

  delicate flesh without harm.

  The wind rushed across him, its force inflating his lungs.

  Accelerating with a glad cry, he passed through an electric

  membrane, a translucent, shimmering curtain that stretched

  vertically from the floor below up to infinity and spread out

  across the entire horizon. Beyond it, titanic figures loomed

  above a landscape of rocks and hills. Next to a monstrous lute, a

  head in profile reclined; from its mouth came a wisp
of smoke that

  curled into a curlicued ideogramwhat it meant or what language

  it came from Gonzales didn't know. Twin white horses rose into

  the air in unison and neighed as he passed. A nude woman lay

  inside a shellboth woman and shell were colored pink and rose

  and pearl. A giant cyclops strode toward him; its doughy head

  seemed half-formed, its mouth just a slash, its nose a mere bump.

  It called to him with inarticulate cries.

  He passed through another curtain, and the world turned black

  and white. Above a featureless sea, a head flew toward him; it

  had dark curly hair and a beaky nose, and it was tilted forward to

  look down on the sea, as if searching for something there. He

  came to a bell that covered almost a quarter of the sky. A

  skeletal figure with just an empty mask for a face hung beneath it

  from the bell-rope; the figure lurched, and the bell's gonging

  sounded through his bones.

  He came to the final curtain. The sky had turned the bright

  blue of dreams. Beyond, the Point of Origin towered, its sides

  pierced by an infinite number of holes. Gonzales flashed through

  the curtain and felt an electric buzz down to his bones, then he

  entered a hole in the vast ramparts of the dark cube.

  #

  Sitting behind a low bamboo table, the old man spooned

  noodles into a wooden bowl, then as Gonzales nodded his assent to

  each choice, added coriander, fried garlic, bean crackers, chopped

  eggs, fish sausage, and sesame nuts. He ladled fish soup over it

  all, finished with a shake of chili powder and a squeeze of lime,

  and handed the bowl to Gonzales with a smile. Gonzales gave a

  handful of cheap-looking kyat bills to the man. Mohinga, this

  breakfast is called, and Gonzales loves ithe has eaten it every

  morning since he discovered it weeks ago.

  Gonzales found a stone bench in front of a nearby pagoda and

  sat eating with a pair of crude chopsticks and watching the

  passers-by. Already the day had grown warm and humid, and he knew

  that any physical exertion would make him sweat. A line of boys

  filed by, led by a monk; their heads were newly-shaven, their

  saffron robes bright and stiff, their begging bowls shiny. They

  were twelve year olds who had just completed their shin pyu, their

  making as monks, a ritual most Burmese boys still went through,

  even in the middle of the twenty-first century.

  After breakfast he had no desire to return to the shed he

  worked in; he set out for a walk through the countryside around

  Pagan.

  Half an hour later, walking a cart track across the arid

  plain, he came to a platform built high off the ground. On it

  were garlands of bright flowers and plates of rice, offerings to

  propitiate the nats, spirits that had animated this land even

  before the arrival of Buddhism. They were mischievous and could

  be quite nasty; in the past, they had demanded human sacrifice.

  The nats were strong around Pagan. At Mount Popa, just

  thirty miles away, Min Mahagiri, brother and sister, "Lords of the

  High Mountain," ruled. Gonzales had heard their story but

  remembered only that as humans these nats had been caught in an

  intrigue of envy and murder, with a neighboring king as the

  villain.

  A young person came walking up the path toward Gonzales,

  dressed in the usual Burmese "western" garb of dark slacks and

  white cotton shirt, head and face a shining sphere of light. Odd,

  thought Gonzales. Wonder how that happened: this person has lost

  both face and gender.

  "Hello," the young person said, and the two of them found a

  low stone bench in front of a nearby pagoda and sat.

  "Why are you here?" the young person asked.

  Gonzales was glad to be asked. He told of the information

  audit about to finish, about Grossback's lack of cooperation

  told what would happen next: that in just a few days he, Gonzales,

  would leave Burma and almost be killed in an air attack by Burmese

  guerrillas.

  "Well, then, let's be on our way. Your aircraft is waiting

  for you nowtime passes very quickly today, it seemsand you

  should be going. Would you mind if I joined you?"

  "No," Gonzales said. "Not at all. If you don't mind almost

  being killed."

  "Oh, that's happened to me lately. I don't mind. Besides, I

  need to experience these things. Like you, I do wish to exist."

  #

  Gonzales sat in the plane's near-darkness, beside him the

  young person with the shining face, both waiting for

  "Kachin attack group, it looks like," the pilot said.

  The miniatures on the screen moved toward them.

  "Extremely small electronic image," the young person said.

  "Very good for air attack against superior technology. Young

  warriors ride them; they carry missiles on their own bodies, slung

  like babies."

  The pilot yelled, "Fuck, they launched!"

  The plane began its air show leaps and dives and turns, and

  at the instant of his terror, Gonzales felt the young person's

  hand on his arm. "They fire too quickly," the young person said.

  "Except for that one." The young person pointed to one of the

  miniature aircraft on their plane's display and said, "It comes

  closest, and I think its pilot will wait until we are at point-

  blank range."

  "Won't that kill him, too?" Gonzales asked.

  "Oh yes," the young person said. "Let's look. Better yet,

  let's be."

  The pilot was a young woman wearing a night-flying helmet

  that enabled her to see in infra-red and carrying beneath her, as

  the young person had said, a one-shot heat seeker in a sling.

  Gonzales and the young person looked through her eyes at the scene

  of battle and thought her thoughts and felt her surge of adrenals.

  In her glasses, the plane's image was clear, a white shape

  outlined in red; she let her guidance system keep her with it,

  closing the distance between them as it maneuvered and avoided the

  missiles fired by those around her.

  She felt excited, yet calm; she had been in combat before,

  and things were going as their briefing had said. Though this

  plane could outfly them so easily, could accelerate up or away,

  into the night, first it had to evade their missiles; just a few

  seconds of straight flight would be all they needed. She would

  wait and grow closer; she would wait until the plane was so close

  she could not miss, or until the others had failed.

  Then all around her the others began to die, in explosions

  that made white flowers in her overloaded night-glasses

  The plane of her enemies stood before her, perhaps near

  enough, perhaps not, but she knew there was no time left, that

  there was another player in this game and it was killing them all.

  So she was ready, her fingers reaching for the launch trigger,

  when she saw an object coming toward her, already too close and

  growing closer with impossible quickness, the heat of its exhaust

  another flower in her glasses, then it burst and she felt the

  smallest imaginable moment of q
uite incredible pain

  Back inside the plane, Gonzales and the young person died

  with her, then Gonzales began sobbing, his body hunched over, as

  this woman's death and his own survival fought inside him grief

  and terror and gratitude and joy and triumph and loss all mixed

  and cycling through him. He could also hear the young person next

  to him weeping. The light from a Burmese Air Force "Loup Garou"

  played over the interior, over the two of them and the shocked

  pilot, who looked back at them in amazement.

  Time stopped all around them. The pilot's strained face had

  frozen, all the instruments on the pilot's panel were locked onto

  a single moment, and out the window, the dark river beneath them

  had ceased to flow. Gonzales and the young person sat in a cell

  of life amid stasis.

  "Don't worry," the young person said. "This gives us a place

  to talk without being bothered. What do you think just happened?"

  "The attack, you mean?" The young person nodded, light from

  its face giving off small shimmering waves of red and blue.

  "Grossback arranged it," Gonzales said. "He wants to kill me."

  "I don't think so. However, assume that what you say is

  true. Is it important?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Why?"

  "Because " Gonzales halted, trying to think of all the ways

  in which this was important: to SenTrax, Traynor

  "But not to you," the young person said. "The young woman

  died, and her comrades died with her: that is important. You and

  the pilot lived: that, too, is important. The Burmese politics,

  the multinat corporate intriguethese are makyo, tricks, nothing

  more. Life and death and their traces in the human heart, these

  have meaning to you. This woman's death lives in you, and your

  life shows its meaning. Forget Grossback, Traynor, SenTrax; fear,

  ambition, greed." The young person looked closely into his face

  and said, "I am weaving words around your heart to guide it,

  nothing more."

  #

  Lizzie crawled in darkness through a tunnel in the rock.

  Chill water ran down grooves in the floor and soaked her blouse

  and pants. She tried to stand but lifted her head only a few

  inches when she bumped into the top of the chatire, the small

  passage she crawled through. She did not feel at all alarmed or

  disoriented. The low tunnel would lead somewhere, and they would

  emerge. This was a test of some kind, it seemed.